by G R Matthews
The name was apt. Comfortable chairs, a massive screen, pool table, a VR pod, and a long bar holding every colour of alcoholic drink you could ever want. Shelves lined one wall and a quick search produced the seal. I turned it over in my hands. It looked just as it had when I had first seen it. Why had they made me take it? A trophy? A point made to a rival? It didn’t matter. Now I had it, I could return it, somehow, and the crime would be as if it never happened. Apart from the guy with the crushed testicles. He might harbour a grudge. Small details.
Back in the kitchen, Rehja had slipped into unconsciousness. Probably just as well. For the next bit, I didn’t need his brain. Just his fingerprints and DNA.
Passwords were great, but long ago people had taken to writing them down, saving them as a file, or just getting caught out by a keystroke logger. Top of the line security these days, on Pads and other mobile devices, was all tied to biorhythms, DNA and such. That way, no one but you could access any sensitive information your devices held. Even a City-AI would find it tough, not impossible, to break in. There was a flaw. If you knew it and didn’t mind doing one or two illegal things you could break into any device.
And here he was. A subdued, captured owner of a device whose sensitive information I wanted access to. Better than that, I was in his own home, with all the permissions that granted a device. A person’s home is their deep, impregnable sea fortress. Nothing bad can happen there. Surely.
I gave him a kick in the shins, just to see if he was truly out. He was.
Taking his Pad, I slipped the screen under his hand and pressed down. The device emitted a beep, a short tune and a few more beeps as it ran through the security checks. Taking his fingerprints, all clear. Checking his DNA, all clear. Monitoring his heart beat signature, fine and dandy. It could have asked for a voice print, but we were at home. Three checks were all it required in such a safe, secure environment.
Messages, forums, sites, personal data. It was all there on the Pad for me to delve through. I patted Rehja on the head. “Thanks. Couldn’t have done it without you.”
I carried the Pad through to the entertainment room, chose a comfortable chair and started to search.
There were work messages, noticeboards and a diary. Mostly boring stuff, employee questions, directives, and meeting notes. Nothing I could use to clear my name. I was certain that if I wanted to escape this city I would have to sort out the issue of the device I had planted and the item I’d stolen. One out of two was a good start, but Rehja and his bosses weren’t going to let me get away easy. Fear on their part that I’d make a complaint, raise hell with the security forces over the fact that they’d try to kill me. And when I did that, I’d need to be clean.
Onward. I flicked through his history log. A lot of folks kept their browsing history secret, had it set to delete whenever they logged out, or used a system that didn’t record it. The more knowledgeable, for good or bad, knew that it made no difference. The City-AI kept a track of every device, every swipe, press and site visited. Use an intra-web, a company one for instance, and stay within its bounds and security was tight. Step beyond those boundaries and the City-AI could track your every step. It also meant that, if you wanted to and knew how, it isn’t difficult, you could retrieve your deleted history log from the AI. I knew how, so I did.
Now, I’m man of the world, drowned as it is, and I’ve seen a lot of things. Rehja’s history was certainly wide ranging and took in multiple specialised interests of an adult nature. Nothing there of any use to me, but it was insight into the man’s mind.
There were some sites I chose to visit and peruse. Those of the company he worked for, a financial trading company that, even after reading the explanation on the site, I couldn’t quite work out how they made money. And that was all they did make. No products. No service. Nothing. A company that made money.
It took a while, and a lot of neck ache, but in one of the files I’d found buried inside an innocuous folder was a picture of the item I’d stolen. An ancient seal, used to prove the providence of an item, person or message. It came, originally, from a land called China. An atlas, also old and certainly out of date, showed a large country with mountains in the north and west, and some large cities. An item from the world above was always worth a lot of money. Something like the seal, to the right person or group, would be almost priceless. It wasn’t just from the before, from the civilisation that had started the cities, it was from thousands of years before that.
Sadly, it didn’t make it clear who it belonged to, but given more time I should be able to re-unite the seal and its owner.
I’ve seen a lot of detective shows, clips and movies. They all suggested the same thing. If you can’t find a reason for something, follow the money. That meant trawling through all the accounts that Rehja kept on the Pad, and there were a lot.
I needed a drink. Probably two or three. Maybe four.
Chapter 40
It took a bit of time and two drinks. Rehja remained unconscious for most of the time. Amazing, the power of a frying pan.
After the first drink, a cold beer from the penthouse owner’s fridge, I figured he wouldn’t mind, I made myself a sandwich and carried on delving into Rehja’s records. A few files I sent across to my own Pad and I had to visit a few forums to read up on the meanings of all the data I was gathering.
I was halfway through the second bottle when I almost spat it over the Pad. If I was right, and the advice I’d taken was correct, the little device they’d had me install on the cable was making them a lot of money every minute. If, and it was a big if because I really hadn’t had the chance to examine the device before I attached it, it was as I suspected, the device was a router. A specialised one. It allowed all the communication from the other cities through, apart from one thread. That data stream it held back, not forever, but just long enough for Rehja’s company to buy or sell stocks, items, and products at the very best price. Profit on every trade.
No one would notice, not for a long time. The router didn’t change the data, just rerouted into a sort of reservoir for a short time. Then the data would spill over, or be released, back into its proper channel and no one would be any the wiser. There must have been some protection on the data cable, or encryptions within the stream itself, but somehow they’d got round it. Or didn’t care.
I needed that device. Two reasons.
One, it would piss Rehja and his bosses off. Their supply of easy money drying up would send them into fits of apoplectic anger. I could live with that.
Two, it could be useful in proving my innocence, or at least as a bargaining chip with the authorities.
To get it I needed my Fish-Suit and that meant going back to the factory. I worried over that for the rest of the bottle before I realised I had the answer at my fingertips. Well, Rehja’s fingertips.
A few swipes, a bit of data entry here and there, and I had booked a visit to the factory under my new name. My cover was simple. I was going as an investment consultant, one who worked for Rehja. Apparently, so my cover email and story said, he was looking to drop some money into an ongoing concern that would provide him with protection against the rising taxes associated with the growing wealth of the company.
The sub departed in the early morning so I finished my beer and checked on Rehja once more. He was still breathing and I couldn’t understand whether that was a glass half-full or half-empty moment. Content that he wasn’t going anywhere, I borrowed his bathroom and made myself free with his bed, setting an alarm on my Pad so I was up early enough to get ready.
# # #
“It will be a sizeable sum,” I said, sipping on the cup of coffee I’d been given.
“How sizeable?” The fat, sweaty accountant in the expensive suit who sat across from me at the table almost rubbed his hands together in glee.
“My client is looking to offset a fair proportion of their tax liability with this investment, and if you’ve been following the fortunes of the company I represent you c
an see just how sizeable that is.” I was proud of that sentence. Just the right amount of promise with an almost total lack of detail. Greedy people were easy to fool as long as you kept money at the forefront of everything you said. “Reports I’ve received suggest that the investment will be sufficient to repair some of the more... underused areas of the factory and leave enough operating capital over to upgrade some of the machines and working practices.”
He sat back, steepling his fingers before his large belly and stared at me through small beady, suspicious eyes. It was an impressive stare ruined only by the crumbs of his last meal that had come to rest upon the shirt that stretched taut across his stomach. “Underused areas. I am not sure I take your meaning, Mr West.”
I favoured him with a smile which lasted long enough for me to calm the rapid thud of my heart. “Come now, let us not play games. Fun as they are. This is an old factory.”
“Old means well run and looked after.”
“I grant you that, but even then it has been subject to the salt water and sustained pressure for more years than we get to see in a lifetime. The lower floors, the ones that support the rest of the structure, are underutilised due to their age.” I raised a hand to forestall his objections. “Please, understand this is not a complaint, more a statement of undeniable fact. The City-AI, as you know, contains all the structural reports of every building under its purview. The records are available to those with the right connections. The company I represent is willing to invest heavily in return for access to those levels, to use as storage for files and other acquisitions.”
“What do you mean acquisitions?” He sat forward more quickly than I thought a fat man could move and the suspicion, and greed, was bright in his eyes.
“Nothing illegal or even shady, I assure you. A company with a wide ranging portfolio of interests is always on the lookout for new space, new opportunities. We will even oversee the repairs, which you can monitor to ensure your satisfaction, to those levels.” I took another sip of coffee, letting the idea sink in. It didn’t take long.
“In effect, you’ll be renting the lower floors from the factory?”
“I would not put it so simply,” I said. “The company will invest a sum of money in the factory. That we may, with your permission, store some of our new acquisitions and files here is purely a, shall we call it, gentleman’s agreement. We would not wish to confuse the role of the factory or our company.”
He settled back once more, pondering. I picked up a biscuit and bit into it, letting the crumbs fall where they would.
“I would like to see the floors, just to make sure the investment is adequate to the costs.” Time to sweeten it a little. “More capital may be forthcoming to ensure that the factory is an ongoing concern for many, many years to come.”
“We should,” he said, “be able to arrange that.”
I had him. “A workman to guide me around would be sufficient. I only wish to make a cursory report to the company.”
“Well, I think that...”
“Seriously, don’t go to any trouble. A workman who can just show me around, let me take a few images for our contract engineers and architects to work on and we can expedite the transfer of funds.”
“Well, that would be,” he began.
“Great,” I said, interrupting, and reaching across the table, offered my hand. I could feel my face muscles stretch my mouth into a smile. All I could hope was it looked less feral than it felt and a lot more honest than I was being.
Chapter 41
Ditching my escort wasn’t difficult. We’d wandered the lower levels for an hour or two with me asking all sorts of pointless questions and taking images with my Pad. She got bored quickly and after half an hour was answering in monosyllabics. An hour later and it was just grunts and sighs. Her shift was probably coming to an end and she wanted to get home. I thanked her for all her help, diverted a healthy tip from my new account to hers as an additional thank you, assured her I would be fine and yes, I knew where the emergency exits were. With a final look over her shoulder she vanished around the corner.
Oxyquid filled the suit and for the first time I felt in control. I still had no idea what exactly was going on. The trading and profiteering was certainly a bad thing to do, but really, I could have planted the device and been gone from the city none the wiser. Hopefully a bit richer, but I wouldn’t have known what I’d done or that it was illegal.
The liquid poured down my throat and I made the practised, conscious effort not to gag and panic. It wasn’t easy. Things not being easy was something I’d come to terms with a long time ago. I wish I hadn’t.
The HUD flickered into view and I worked through the safety checks before sending the command to fill the airlock. Water rose past my knees, chest and over my head. The lights turned green, the door opened and with a push from the thrusters I was out in the ocean.
Home. Of sorts. It felt good. The noise of the ocean surrounded me as much as the water did. Groans and thuds, a rhythmic thump and hum, all sorts of sounds. Some I could identify, some I couldn’t. Mechanical, human made sounds, were easy to distinguish from the biotic. There is something friendly about the deep ocean. As long as that friend was always within a second of crushing your lungs, snapping your bones and generally killing you in the most painful ways possible. I’ve known a few like that.
The map on my HUD showed my surroundings in glorious fake colour and contour lines. Moving my fingers on the control surfaces inside the gloves, I scrolled through my destination history and found the spot on the buried cable where I’d placed the device. I set it as the nav destination and watched the readout of the journey. My energy levels would get me there and back to the city with enough spare to be safe. It wouldn’t be a quick journey and I didn’t want to be caught on the city’s security net, so the route wasn’t straight forward. I could cope with a little boredom for a while, so I set the autopilot to follow the defined route using the minimum of power. A flick of a finger and I was away, like a sea cucumber who’d been gorging itself on the fattiest, sugariest, detritus it could find on the sea floor for the last year or two.
The good thing about the deep, for hiding anyway, was that without the light of a city, searchlight or active sonar a small object, like me, was quite hard to spot. Almost impossible unless someone was actually searching. In this time of relative peace there was little security apart from the early warning nets which surround the city. Amongst the buildings it was relatively easy to hide amidst the noises of transport subs and power generators.
Sediment had drifted down through the water column and covered the cable. It took a little twisting and turning to get the motors in line and to anchor myself so the force of the water pushed the sediment away, not me.
I hovered over the device, my gloved hand just a centimetre or two from its surface. My muscles had frozen without conscious thought, without any direction from my thinking brain. Something was screaming at me. Not a warning, but a realisation and it took a moment for me to understand. The moment I removed this device they would know. Not that I was alive, though Rehja already knew that. Kade had known, but he wouldn’t be telling anyone.
No. They would know that someone had removed the device. They would be afraid that someone knew what they had done. I couldn’t remember any markings on the device and tracing it back would probably take the skills of a very expensive hacker/programmer. Still, it was about time someone else started to worry about things.
I plucked the device off the cable and secured it to my suit.
A flick of the controls, selecting a new destination, an underused airlock on the lower level on one of the boxes, and I was in motion again.
Time to clear my name.
Chapter 42
I could go back to Rehja’s place and check on him, or head for my little stash of evidence and onto security. As I didn’t care about Rehja’s well-being, the decision was easy. The Fish-Suit was stashed away and I’d shrugged myself into the standard
jumpsuit, a lovely green colour, and soft soled shoes that came with it. Into one of the pockets, I put the suit’s Pad and headed into the city proper.
The first sign of trouble I missed completely. I know the jumpsuit wasn’t flattering, but why did everyone have to stop and stare at me as I went by. Okay, it wasn’t everyone, but in hindsight, the sharpest and deadliest of all weapons, I should have noticed. A smile was my normal response. Most folks smiled back and some gave a half-hearted wave. I was really fucking stupid.
My stash, the seal and a few other bits and pieces of useful evidence, were hidden in a box on the other side of the city. I’d have preferred to come in at an airlock there, or at least closer, but it just wasn’t possible.
“Stop,” the shout caught me by surprise and I turned to see who it had been directed at. The upper level of a box was typically full of shops, stalls and bars. Neon lights and signs illuminated the crowd of people moving back and forth between their pleasures; food, drink or something more sweaty. I’m not the tallest, but I could see over most of the heads and I picked out the shouter by the uniform he wore and the arm he waved. He called again and I started to run. “Hayes, stop!”
My soft soles slipped on the metal floor as I tried to find traction. Grabbing a shoulder or two to push folks out of my way I started to gain speed. Like all box dwellers, the finely honed sense of survival came to the fore and they parted before me. The open corridor gave me room to run, but box dwellers were fully behind the equal opportunities agenda and had parted before the security officer too.
He called again, shouting my name for all to hear and the mere fact of me running caused most folks to turn my way. Great. I’m not infamous in this city. At least, I wasn’t and not for the same reason as my home city, but I was fast developing a reputation that would spread like a case of crabs in a low-class house of adult entertainment.